Kuno, the son in Renate Rasp’s novel, A Family Failure, wishes he could be as lucky as Gregor Samsa. When Gregor was transformed into a monstrous cockroach, at least his family had the decency to reject him. Kuno’s family — specifically his stepfather (who prefers to be referred to as “Uncle Felix”) — wants to keep him AND turn him into a monster. It is Uncle’s plan to transform Kuno into a tree.
“Needless to say everyone can choose the way he wants to live. Man is born free,” Uncle tells Kuno. At that moment, Kuno was free to learn how to grasp things with tongs because Uncle Felix has cut his hands off. This is in preparation for his arms being shaped into branches.
This distresses Kuno’s mother, who invited Mr. Pettkola, the artificial limb manufacturer’s agent, to the house to discuss providing Kuno with artificial hands. But Kuno is too smart to let his mother off that easily. Better that she continue to watch “the sight of my tongs, the swellings of my stumps.”
Uncle Felix’s plan is meticulous, full of intermediate steps, requiring years to be carried out. “We’ll have to change your diet. No meat, no sausages, no butter. Your mother knows it. Only vegetable fats, a lot of vegetables and water, above all water, more and more water.” Uncle knows just how to manipulate the boy’s emotions: “If this littel sacrifice is too much for you say so at once, then I’ll know where I stand, and we can spare ourselves a lot of trouble before we even start.” Becoming a tree is a matter of family pride. Uncle Felix certainly isn’t undertaking all this trouble for himself. This is a joint endeavor. “You do understand,” he tells Kuno, “that there must be no disagreements between us all, not now.”
One day, Uncle rousts Kuno early. Standing him in the kitchen, he carefully wraps the boy’s legs in wire to hold them together. He wraps bandages over the eyes until no light penetrates. “Six months from now, and you’ll be able to stand the sun without any bandages. Hours of it. You won’t be able to see any more.” He fills the boy’s ears with wax. Kuno is ready to begin practicing being a tree.
As grim as the slow, calculating mutilation of Kuno is to read, one cannot help be aware that, writing in the late 1960s, as a prosperous West Germany was leaving its Nazi past behind, Renate Rasp’s story was not realism but satire of the most savage order. The older generation destroying its young by forcing them into an absurdly unnatural mold. The mother as representative of the accommodators: “She wants to exonerate uncle. He has done what he could, like a father.” If there has been a failure, it is Kuno’s, in failing to shape himself to Uncle’s ideals. These were painful themes from the country’s recent past.
The German title of A Family Failure was Ein ungeratener Sohn, which roughly translates to “An unruly son.” At no point in this book does anyone — not neighbors, not passing acquaintances, not men from the shops — question what Uncle is doing. True, his methods might be a little severe, but then it’s clear that Kuno is not always trying his hardest.
The satire of A Family Failure/Ein ungeratener Sohn may have been too much at the time for readers to take, but the book remains just as neglected in Germany as with English readers. It begs to be rediscovered, for it’s one of the most powerful and unforgettable parables of the dangers of an older generation taking too much control in shaping the destiny of a younger one.
In a way this sounds just a strange as the book GoatMan by Thomas Thwaites. Which was not, in any way, a metaphor. The man actually tried to change himself into a goat.